Erasures

City More Than I Suspected

City More Than I Suspected Where Lot's wife left the train the world's hair unraveled and fell, not wantonly, but with the precision of hopelessness, the dead man who handles his cigarette and fork like a surgeon, knowing death's weight. Under the toque of my life I'm begging, I'm cakewalking. I hurdy-gurdy and my friends become other animals or fanatic labyrinths. The world's hair falls too slowly, China is unavenged, and every child is justified spitting from the schoolbus when his spittle hits home. My friend whispers the sonnet of his first adultery into the telephone. His baby son is an idiot, and his wife grows large with uncontainable loveliness she fills with voices. Years of idiocy cannot stop my admiration. Years of betrayal on the grand scale taught China nothing. Impossible cloud crossing the mountains, she is perfect only where the spittle strikes her. Perfect only zero in Asia, 19 pretending to the life of a woman, she handles her mob genitals roughly. Where Lot's wife left the train the salt-taste of her hair made Heaven of hopelessness. No one travels farther than that. 20 ...